Jump in ‘synthetic marijuana’ hospitalizations cause for concern

Published 4:27 pm, Sunday, May 31, 2015

There’s been a huge jump in monthly hospitalizations caused by a class of drugs often called “synthetic marijuana“— from 359 cases nationwide in January, to more than 1,500 in April, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers. This is plenty of cause for parents, as well as public health officials, to be alarmed, and for a number of reasons:

This stuff is not pot. Not even close, according to experts quoted in Forbes magazine. It’s not marijuana, it’s not cannabis, and its active ingredient is much stronger— up to 100 times stronger, maybe more — than the THC in real marijuana.

Taking so-called synthetic marijuana is like playing Russian roulette, according to Dr. John W. Huffman, one of its inventors. Symptoms can be severe, and can include agitation, vomiting, hallucination, paranoia, tremor, seizure, cardiac problems, stroke, kidney damage, acute psychosis, brain damage and death.

“Synthetic cannabinoids are tailor-made to hit cannabinoid receptors— and hit it hard,” said Dr. Jeff Lapoint, an emergency room physician and medical toxicologist. What’s more, unlike marijuana, they act on receptors that are in all parts of the brain. “This is NOT marijuana. Its action in the brain may be similar but the physical effect is so different.”

But to make it sound like an attractive (and harmless) product, “synthetic marijuana” is sold under names including Spice, K-2, fake weed, Yucatan Fire, Bliss, Blaze, Skunk and Moon Rocks, along with variants on “JWH” (for Huffman).

Which makes it hard to control, because by the time authorities can identify and regulate one variant, such as JWH-018, another one, such as JWH-073, comes along.

An overdose on “synthetic marijuana” looks very different from an overdose on the real thing. “Pot users are usually interactive, mellow, funny,” said another medical toxicologist. “With people using synthetic, they look like people who are using amphetamines: they’re angry, sweaty, agitated.”

The body seems unable to deactivate the synthetic drug as it metabolizes it, which may be another reason the synthetic is so powerful.

There’s no such thing as quality control with this stuff. It’s made in underground labs, often in China. The makers take some random herb and spray it with the chemical. You have no idea how much active ingredient you’re getting.

To complicate matters even further, the drugs are always evolving, with hundreds of different forms coming from different labs. And each one may be perfectly legal until authorities have had time to analyze and regulate it, which can take months or years.

In other words, this stuff is just about the perfect storm, from a public health standpoint. “People think, ’Oh, it’s just weed, just fake marijuana,’” Lapoint said. “This is not the same thing. You are experimenting with unknown compounds. You’re being a guinea pig.”

Even if the prohibition of natural marijuana should come to an end in more states, Lapoint stresses that the synthetic product, whether it’s called Spice or K-2 or something else, “was never intended to be used in people. ...This is not marijuana. It should not be thought of like marijuana.

“We have to get this out there: Its effects are serious. It’s a totally different drug.”